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Epilepsy and Family

Fri, 07/25/2014 - 23:21

Topic: Family & Friends

As I grew up I learned about epilepsy because it was something that did effect more than one member of the family. I did have a grandfather who passed away from drowning because of a seizure and my mother also had epilepsy and two brain tumors when I was young. Two of the youngest kids did also have epilepsy while we were in school at that time. I was lucky not to have epilepsy then. My brother did have brain surgery at Mayo's and did not make it from the operation, but I am very proud that he had the surgery. I finally started having epilepsy at age 27 after finished with college. It was tough on me for this to show up, I did continue work, even as seizures continued. The only positive was they occured while asleep, which allowed me to continue to drive and perform my sales job. I would be exhausted the next day after my nightime seizure. I did finally have a VNS added and I did continue having seizures. I eventually had the brain surgery and it has helped, but still have seizures. Also with it being the left frontal lobe my short term memory is gone. Now this has been three generations of people having epilepsy in the family. After this along comes a nephew, the son of my sister who grew up with epilepsy. The nephew makes it four generations in our family. This tells me epilepsy has to be heriditary. From what I can tell we are the one family in the U.S. with four generations. I do as much as I can to share information with others about epilepsy and that is what so many others should be doing. Such a small percentage of the population truly understands the true meaning of what epilepsy is and what it means. Share all you can with friends and do not be ashamed of any issues. Things like this will help to increase the general knowledge and perception of epilepsy with the entire population of America.

Comments

Thanks for sharing. Many of

Submitted by just_joe on Sat, 2014-07-26 - 21:02

Thanks for sharing. Many of us come in here to share information and help others. The stigam still exists but the walls are starting to come down.

In all that I have read about

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 2014-08-03 - 15:25

In all that I have read about Epilepsy, there is conflicting information regarding the disease being hereditary or not. In my case, there is no hereditary linkage in my family concerning epilepsy. I am the only one in my family that I know of that has grand mal seizures only while I am sleeping. None of my brothers or sisters have seizures, no cousins on both sides of the family has seizures, no aunts or uncles on both sides has seizures, my grand parents on both sides did not have epilepsy or seizures, just me. Although there is mental illness in my family on both sides of the family. My mother's father had Alzheimer's, his wife had some kind of mental problem where she would start talking gibberish and acting like a girl whenever neighbors would visit. The family never knew what was wrong with her. Several cousins of mine had some kind of mental problems as well. At least one committed suicide when I was a young girl. My older brother has Bi-Polar Manic Depression, and several of my other brothers and sisters have depression. I also have mild depression. I read an article where doctors discovered that mental illness and seizures are very close together in the brain. So maybe mental illness has resulted in seizures in my case. Well that is it. Take care.

With some people there is

Submitted by just_joe on Thu, 2014-08-07 - 15:39

With some people there is nothing that can be found causing epilepsy. Do you know that epilepsy is more common than Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and strokes combined? Yet, little is said or writen about it, as many endure those symptoms in secret for fear of stigma.

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